A 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew applied to the battery of most domestic cars will dissolve not only the battery but the engine block as well.

Industrial-grade structural concrete is less dense than the human femur.

Pencil shavings are toxic to baboons.

Ownership of the Statue of Liberty will revert to France in 2386.

In medieval times, horses were thought to be the marine offspring of sea horses and consequently were permitted to be eaten by Catholics on Fridays.

The apparent birthmark on the head of Mikhail Gorbachev is in fact the scarred impression of a surgically removed Marilyn Monroe tattoo.

An unopened letter dated February 2, 1862 and addressed to Abraham Lincoln was discovered during renovation of the White House mail room in 1953; the missive was from a young adult admirer named William McKinley, who warned the President to be on guard against assassins.

Ludwig van Beethoven allowed mice to live inside his piano.

Beloved radio broadcaster Paul Harvey’s life was devoid of irony.

The common house fly has no long-term memory.

Light bulbs sold in the Southern Hemisphere are threaded for counterclockwise insertion.

The basic principles of the Internet were discovered by Leonardo da Vinci.

If our planet were to rotate just one mile faster than it does, the resulting centrifugal force would be sufficient to overcome the centripetal force of gravity, causing everyone and everything to fling off into space.

Cheddar cheese is banned in Iran.

Diners wearing belts are statistically five times less likely to overeat than those wearing elastic waistbands.

Ed McMahon was a certified doctor of divinity.

Astronauts must massage their abdomens to avoid constipation in space.

The furniture in the Oval Office is fixed to the floor.

Cell phone technology is a byproduct of the Manhattan Project.

Whiskey, vinegar and uric acid can be combined to make a primitive embalming fluid.

Charles Dickens was illiterate until a year before he wrote his first novel.

A crocodile’s reproductive organs are in its mouth.

The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 destroyed the first functional prototype of a television.

Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst bought the Great Wall of China for an undisclosed sum in 1895 from a visiting delegation of Chinese diplomats. The Chinese government later refused to acknowledge the sale.